6/11/2014
Bankruptcy in the banking and IT industries
Oh I am not referring to the monetary aspect of these two industries. I am referring to the skill sets of the professionals particularly at the senior and top management levels. There seems to be a dearth of local talents in these two industries today. 20 years ago, we were already a major financial centre in the region and our locals were filling up the top management positions in these industries. Particularly in banking and finance, the MAS, under the leadership of Koh Beng Seng, were telling the foreign banks operating here to train the locals to assume top management positions.
Today, the top management positions are filled by foreigners and more foreigners are coming in to replace the locals caused they can’t find any locals good enough. What is happening? What were the foreign banks doing in the last twenty years? Why is this financial centre and highly IT connected city facing bankruptcy in its local human resource to fill the needs of these industries?
The situation is real bad when it has to recruit its top management staff from a third world country like India. Singapore was so advanced in banking and finance and IT relative to India. Why is Singapore becoming dependent on India for its professional manpower in these industries? Why is a first world city state losing out in developing its manpower skill sets to a third world country that is anything but a financial centre?
And the pathetic thing today is the call to train our young recruits in these industries for future leadership positions. What it means is that the current batch of middle and senior management staff are duds or inepts, not good enough, not material for top management. And it would take another 20 or 30 years to groom the young things of today to prepare them for the future. In the meantime, in the next 20 or 30 years, the top financial centre and IT city will have to depend on foreigners to fill up top positions in these two industries. In total at least 50 years have been wasted with a vacuum of top management talents that would put the city state in a very precarious position. It has no talents!
Is this a joke? If this is real, then it is a very serious problem caused by bad planning and lack of foresight. It cannot be intentional. It is no laughing matter that we can take our own sweet time to talk cock and sing song.
Kopi Level - Yellow
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9 comments:
There are not even enough of ordinary Sinkies, let alone talented Sinkies in banking and IT.
That's the reason why PAP is even letting in so many ordinary foreigners and of course also talented ones to fill up the many jobs that are needed to generate GDP growth.
Of course as a bad side effect, some Sinkies, talented and untalented, will be affected (become jobless) due to this lah.
As long as such Sinkies are a minority say 40% or less, I think PAP view it as tolerable and within acceptable risk to take for the sake of GDP growth.
And indeed there are good and valid reasons why Ah Loong said Sinkieland belongs to all.
There are not enough unhappy and angry or even poor Sinkies to vote PAP out.
/// Particularly in banking and finance, the MAS, under the leadership of Koh Beng Seng, were telling the foreign banks operating here to train the locals to assume top management positions. ///
No need for KBS to tell. The banks in Singapore, both local and foreign, were already producing many local senior bankers. In particular, the top rungs of Citibank were all locals - and they went on to fill the top posts of most of the local banks. So much so that OCBC was known as Old Citi Bankers Club.
Then, a wise old man decided to bring in ang mo to helm the local banks. FILTHs (Failed In London, Tried Hongkong) like John Old & Phillip Pillart were recruited to helm DBS. They in turn bring in tens of Fallen Talents who were made MDs, but whose actual work were done by locals. These FILTHs really screwed up the local banking scene. And now we want to groom local banking talents.
Really a replay of the 1G leaders versus the 3G leaders. The 3G leaders created the problems and now they want to solve the problems they have created.
In the last 20 years Spore has shown that it is incapable of producing top management talents. So what can they achieve when the environment is even worse than before?
If they are serious, they should send the young recruits to work in New York before returning to take up senior management positions.
But then, I don't think the current senior management are made up of duds. They were by passed when some people think foreigners are best and Sinkies are daft.
Foreign banks are stepping up efforts to groom local staff, reported ST. What had they been doing in the last 20 years? And they are still giving the craps about PRs as locals.
What about Singaporeans? What happens to the Singaporean core?
The hollowing out of native talent in banking is a pithy summary of what I believe is happening to most professional sectors in Singapore.
At the risk of sounding cliche, it may have something to do with the laissez faire happy go lucky policy of the PAP to grow the economy by putting the population on round after round of steroids.
While I agree globalization is inexorable and leaving labor demand and supply to the vagaries of the wisdom of the free market usually produces the best results. I believe the custodians of power may not fully appreciate the limits of the aphorism, 'survival of the fittest.' As when governments opt to remain bovine, indifferent and even slack back as leave it all to the auto pilot mode - then the harsh realities generated by the forces of free wheeling and unmitigated globalization - can only be taken to it's ridiculous and vicious end often producing less than equitable outcomes that may even generate more grief than goodies for natives.
What I feel is under appreciated by the custodians of power is the idea that jobs are not just jobs - they're are a fine network of social linkages composed of intricate social and cultural attributes which makes possible the master and apprentice relationship - and this is really just a very convoluted way of saying, this is how every society reliably perpetuates itself and grows from strength to strength - the process (for lack of a better word) is not dissimilar to how a samurai sword is forged - layer by layer, till what is finally manufactured is a hard inner core which holds together the cutting edge and a very flexible form.
My point is globalization needs to be intelligently managed and in certain cases even regulated to benefit the natives - and the only way to reliably accomplish this is to nourish the core in the native intellectual capital and not hollow it out with a free for all survival of the fittest fest. This is why Chin Leng, you don't see the most creative and innovative societies resorting to short term growth strategies such as ramping up their population as a means of creating competitive advantage - their planners all know that's the lazy man's way to succeed on the cheap that usually comes at the exorbitant cost of creating an underclass of marginalized middle class professionals.
This is a growing problem Chin Leng - the very idea of the native core competence in banking and other sectors being whittled down to a point where it can no longer regenerate itself coherently to set instructional and directional agendas any longer - what you're witnessing is a sort of genocide.
I reckon many years from now. Many natives will look back at this tumultuous period in our history and wonder with a bitter sweet sentiment whether it was all worth it.
Darkness 2014
We have very clever leaders who have forgotten what is the meaning of a country and citizenship. The power bestowed on the leaders is to uplift the lives of its citizens and not the citizens of the world.
The lack of wisdom is glaring and till now they are still happily plodding along this path of hollowing out the core and replacing it with mercenaries. They are even very happy to lump the PRs as locals to deceive themselves that locals are also citizens.
Indians are very good snake charmers so they can easily charm all the snakes aka gov and made them do whatever they want. Even uncle sam also charm by them. Hollywood no match for Bollywood.
At the rate Sinkies are being replaced by foreigners in so many jobs, soon the only skill set possessed by Sinkies will be driving taxis and security guards.
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